Out of This World

Kellan shook his head grimly. “I don’t know.” He shut the cabinet. “But I wish like hell I did.”

I waited for the inevitable realization, which didn’t take longer than a beat, because as laid-back and easygoing as Kellan might be, he was not in any way slow or stupid.

His eyes landed on mine, and held.

I lifted a shoulder.

“You saw through that cabinet,” he said.

“I saw through the cabinet.”

“And through my pants.”

“Yeah, but if it helps, I didn’t mean to.” Much.

He just stared at me.

I tried not to look again, but he stood there, an intensely physical presence with something of an attitude-and boy, I was a sucker for attitude-in his faded Levi’s and that borrowed sweatshirt, which only hinted at the broad shoulders I could actually see.

“What else?” he asked hoarsely.

“Well, your sweatshirt-”

“I meant, what else besides me can you see through, Rach?” he said in a low, rather frustrated-sounding voice.

“Oh.” Right. “Uh, well…”

“Rach.”

“Everything.” I shrugged my shoulders helplessly. “I can see through everything.”

“Do you see dead people, too?” he asked, trying to joke.

I shook my head.

And he nodded his, relieved. Then, in what was the nicest thing he could have done in that moment, he pulled me in for a hard hug. “This is fucking insane,” he whispered against my damp hair. “I’m not crazy about insane, Rach.”

I held on tightly and closed my eyes. “Me, either. What do you think is wrong with me?”

“Nothing.”

“I can see through things, Kellan.”

He tipped my chin up, his eyes dark, his voice low and quiet and incredibly soothing. “I can’t explain that, but it’s this place. I know it.” He pulled back, and shivered.

I realized I was shivering, too.

He made a sound of concern and went to work on the buttons down the front of my pink, gauzy shirt.

“Hey,” I said, holding the material closed, “I can do that.”

“Okay.” Backing up, he turned away and eyed the couch, no doubt wondering who could possibly sleep there.

Damn, he had a nice back, all smooth and sleek and tanned. Tanned? “When did you get sun?”

“Uh, every day of my life?” He kicked off his shoes. “I swim all day long in the tanks outside, remember?” He went still, and glanced at me over his shoulder, his eyes shadowed from me. “More seeing through stuff?”

I felt my cheeks heat, not because I’d been peeking, but because until now, I’d been mostly peeking south of his tanned back-waaay south.

“You getting into a hot shower?” he asked.

“Um…”

“Let me rephrase. You are getting into a hot shower.”

This assertive Kel was new. “Maybe, things will somehow seem better, or different, when we’re warm,” he said, slightly less gruffly, but no less forcefully.

I couldn’t tear my eyes off him. “Yeah.”

“Let’s go.”

Let’s. Yes, let’s take a shower.

In fact, the image of just that flitted through my brain and stayed there-thank you so much, my overactive imagination-the two of us together beneath the spray, with Kellan naked and wet and gleaming as he pinned me against the wall to have his merry way with me.

Sexual healing, huh.

Oh boy. In my fantasy, he knew exactly how to sexually heal me. “Kellan?”

“Warm up first.” He looked at me, and I had trouble breathing, mostly due to the fact that my cool, calm, laid- back and easygoing Kellan was not so laid-back and calm right now, no matter what his outside appearance said.

This knowledge had not come to me through my mysterious and newfound talent of seeing through things.

Nope, didn’t need to see through his jeans to see he was aroused.

I actually had to lift my hand and fan my hot face. “You know what?”

His voice sounded a little gruff. “What?”

“Suddenly I’m warm. Very warm.”

Chapter 8

Kellan sighed, and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “I’m sorry, Rach. It’s that kiss. It’s messing with my head big time.”

There, one of us had said it. Thank God. “The kiss?”

He cut those amazing eyes to me. “You forgot about it?”

Not likely. “No, I’ve, um, been thinking about it, too.” I’d also been thinking about getting another. You know, just to see if it had been a fluke. “And then there was what Axel and Marilee said.”

His eyes heated. “About the sex thing?”

I had to clear my throat to answer. “I believe they used the word ‘amazing.’ The ‘amazing’ sex thing. But yeah, that.”

“Thought you might have been snoozing through that part of the conversation.”

“No, I heard.”

“Oh.” He brushed past me and went into the bathroom. I heard the shower come on, and a moment later he was back, propping a shoulder against the doorway as if he owned it. “I lit some candles. The water’s ready for you.”

“Kel?”

He looked reluctant to answer. “Yeah?”

“Do you really believe that we’re going to find some sort of a wild connection this weekend?”

“Rach, just get in the shower.” He definitely didn’t want to have this conversation with me, which perversely made me want to have this exact conversation.

“Go,” he said. Begged.

I was doing pretty well without the shower regarding that getting-warm thing. In fact, just looking at his lean, muscular frame made me feel as if I had an inner fire raging. “Kel-”

“Look, I don’t really want to talk about any cosmic connection.”

“How about wild sex? You want to talk about wild sex?”

“No.”

“But I do.” I had no idea how those words made it past my inner editor. Oh wait, that’s right, I didn’t have an inner editor. Still, I usually had some pride-meaning I never made the first move on a man, preferring instead to be chased. I stood there a minute, trying to figure out how things had changed.

“Get in the shower, Rach.”

“But-”

“Please.”

“Fine.”